Meet IT's new managers

Mike Blake didn't start out as a geek.

As an accountant with an MBA in economics from the University of Chicago, he was about as pure finance as you can get. But in 1995, when United Airlines plucked him from its corporate planning department and dropped him into its IT shop, his life changed completely.

"I probably knew less about IT than anybody else in the strategic planning department," Blake says. "I had a hard time spelling 'IT.' But I soon began to realize that the whole world of United could be understood by how its systems were utilized."

After three-plus years as IT controller at United and a short stint at a b-to-b startup, Blake moved to Sears, where he became IT director of finance. Bitten by the technology bug, Blake went back to school and got a master's degree in computer science.

"I understood the IT projects, and a lot of business people at Sears didn't," Blake says. "I was able to start bridging the gap between technology and finance and tell them what those numbers really meant."

Now, as the CFO of IT at Kaiser Permanente, Blake oversees an annual IT budget of $1.2 billion. But he's more than just a techie in a suit or a number cruncher who can go deep on networking protocols. He's a new kind of employee: one who balances deep technical know-how with an equally solid understanding of the bottom line.

Be it in finance, marketing, operations, or other key corporate functions, individuals who blend tech skills with business acumen will enjoy the greatest opportunities for advancement. Those who don't may find themselves on the chopping block, and as job descriptions embrace technology as a matter of course, the notion of IT as a separate department may soon be a relic as well.

Bridging two worlds

When the dot-com boom went bust, it took a lot of creative job titles along with it. Positions like "evangelist," "guru," and "gladiator" were quietly replaced with old-school titles like "product manager" and "vice president of sales."

The handful of relatively new titles that have emerged in the post-dot-com era -- such as CFO of IT, chief process officer, or compliance officer -- reflect an environment in which technology exists to support core business values. If you want to rise to the top of the IT food chain, you need to know more than just IT.

"I saw a title last year I loved -- 'senior vice president of operational effectiveness,' " says Paul Groce, a partner at Christian & Timbers, an executive recruiter. "It brings IT, front and back office together into one role. It's about leveraging technology to automate and improve your processes, so you can develop products faster and better. If a corporation came to us and said, 'Find us the perfect VP of OE,' chances are we'd look for someone who's both very IT- and business-savvy."

"Companies are totally focused on the bottom line," agrees Jeff Markham, division director at Robert Half Technology (RHT), an IT staffing provider. "They don't care if their Web site looks pretty if they can't analyze the click-through rate and get that intelligence into the hands of the VP of marketing."